Madame Claes
suppressed the whole expense of equipages and servants, which her
present isolation from the world rendered unnecessary, and she did so
without pretending to conceal the retrenchment under any pretext. So
far, facts had contradicted her assertions, and silence for the future
was more becoming: indeed the change in the family mode of living
called for no explanation in a country where, as in Flanders, any one
who lives up to his income is considered a madman.
And yet, as her eldest daughter, Marguerite, approached her sixteenth
birthday, Madame Claes longed to procure for her a good marriage, and
to place her in society in a manner suitable to a daughter of the
Molinas, the Van Ostron-Temnincks, and the Casa-Reals. A few days
before the one on which this story opens, the money derived from the
sale of the diamonds had been exhausted. On the very day, at three
o'clock in the afternoon, as Madame Claes was taking her children to
vespers, she met Pierquin, who was on his way to see her, and who
turned and accompanied her to the church, talking in a low voice of
her situation.
"My dear cousin," he said, "unless I fail in the friendship which
binds me to your family, I cannot conceal from you the peril of your
position, nor refrain from begging you to speak to your husband. Who
but you can hold him back from the gulf into which he is plunging? The
rents from the mortgaged estates are not enough to pay the interest on
the sums he has borrowed.
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